Wednesday, January 9th, 2008
“The limits of intelligence”
The Wall Street Journal recently (December 10, 2007) ran an op-ed article by two former members of the House Intelligence Committee (Peter Hoekstra, R-MI and Jane Harman, D-CA) under the title “The Limits of Intelligence”. The article was written in reaction to the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate that claimed that Iran has suspended its nuclear weapons development programs.
However, it contains broader lessons about the uses and misuses of intelligence. They say, “Intelligence is in many ways an art, not an exact science…The information we receive from the intelligence community is but one piece of the puzzle in a rapidly changing world. It is not a substitute for policy, and the challenge for policy makers is to use good intelligence wisely to fashion good policy.”
